Reality TV

Reality TV is real, or is it? Maybe it is only really TV?

And what is reality TV? Well, put four people in a room, people who are not actors, just regular people, and forget the script,. All you need is a scenario or a situation. Then you film what they do and use the results to entertain people. That's reality TV.

One popular “reality” show is called Fear Factor. It is a stunt/dare program where people are put in situations that are unusual in exchange for the hope of winning a lot of fame and money. For example: Two family members would have to take turns using their mouths to transfer stink beetles from one bowl to another. If they could transfer all the stink beetles in one minute, they would win a $5,000 Credit Card.

Amazing concept, isn't it, and amazingly it was done on the show.

While this kind of show may be amusing, there have been many instances on the show where common sense or decency is abandoned in favor of the shock value to the the audience and of course, the financial lure to win. The Associated Press reported in January 2005 that a man in Cleveland Ohio was suing NBC’s Fear Factor for $2.5 million. The reason? They had a challenge in which frozen dead rats were blended in a blender and then put before contestants to consume and they did.

The people on the show drank the blended rat beverage and the man filing the lawsuit claimed it made him sick to watch it. The judge presiding over the Fear Factor case threw it out, calling it “frivolous.”

The public had mixed reactions.

Some people were critical of the man who attempted to sue the TV show producers, saying that the guy was simply “money hungry." They say the man shouldn’t have watched it if it was going make him ill. They claim that it was his own fault and insisted that he could have simply changed the channel or turned the TV off, but obviously, he didn't. Other believe that something needs to be done to keep such things from being on TV, and sueing seems to be the only answer. Howver, the judge made his ruling and the man lost the case. Besides, what's gross about eating rats? Who’s to say, except for a vegetarian, that four-legged furry, mammalian rats aren’t edible?

It was shocking to some for sure, but this wasn’t the first time the Fear Factor producers did something to shock its audience with something that most of America would consider to be gross. This is, you know, the kind of stuff that gives the show its ratings.

But everyone knows that at some point the shock value, say of moving stink bugs with your mouth wears off and you need to come up with something more shocking, like eating an earthworm or a grub and the next thing you know you need a frozen rat milkshake or something. o keep people tuned into the show. You cannot simply keep doing stinkbugs because the thrill wears off. Each time, you just need something with a little more shock and entertainment value.

There was once a time when the Colosseum of Rome hosted their brand of game shows for entertainment and they did some pretty gross things there too. Their venue featured things like fights between animals and people, called beastiarii. For a fee at the gate one could come and watch as animals, beasts like elephants, lions, rhinoceros, camels, ostrich, dogs or bulls would be challenged by some daring soul, killed for sport and entertainment of the crowd, unless of course the animal got the best of the human.

There were other forms of entertainment too. Sometimes people who had committed crimes like murder or arson or Christians who committed blasphemy against the religion of the state, even humiliores (the more vagrant types of ancient Rome) would be put into the arena with wild beasts for the sport of seeing the fear factor of the human beings and even watching what the starved animals would do to a human being. There were also the fierce and savage gladiator games in which both men and women fought, sometimes to the death without any rules of clothes or referees, and there would be a lot of bloodshed. The winner would take the prize of course. It was sport, entertainment, and much like reality TV, it would be shocking and rouse the crowds with excitement.

Fear Factor is no doubt tamer than the Colosseum of Rome. All they do is things like submerge people in vats with snakes to see which contestant will stay in the longest, or count how many spiders a person is willing to eat, or put a frozen rat in a blender to make a special drink. It really just all done in fun, for sport and entertainment of the audience. There’s no comparison really; at least, not yet.